Most Emailed Articles

Video:How to Roast and Peel Beets

with
Erica Wides

Has your CSA loaded you up with more beets than you can handle? Learn how to roast beets, and peel them easily.See Transcript

Transcript:How to Roast and Peel Beets

Hi. I'm Erica Wides from Chefsmartypants.com, here for about.com. I love beets. I think beets are one of the best vegetables out there. They're so good. They're so sweet. They're so nutritious. You have to treat beets with love and respect. And you have to coax their sugars out of them. So they get really sweet and delicious. So, the best way, I think, to cook beets, is to roast them.

Prep the Beets

You just get a nice bunch of beets - the smaller the better. The smaller the beets that you find, the sweeter they'll be. Also, if your beets come with really nice beet greens, you should save those and sauté them. So, what I'm going to do is just cut off those beet greens, take my beets, and just trim the rest of that stem off of there. You don't need to trim all the way down. Just take off some of that stem. And then, put them in a baking dish. Something like this, a glass baking dish is fine or a metal cake pan - anything that will hold them comfortably.

Coat the Beets

We're going to put just a little bit of olive oil on top of them. You just want enough olive oil to coat them. The coating with oil helps to raise the surface temperature of the beet and will allow them to get really nice and caramelized and cook all the way through. You just rub them down with a little bit of oil, like that. And then you can season them, with just a little bit of salt. We'll be peeling the beets after they're cooked.

Peeling Beets

You maybe were wondering why I hadn't peeled my beets yet. Because I don't have to peel them when they're raw because once they're cooked the peel comes right off.

Roast the Beets

So, I have some salt a little pepper and a piece of foil. What you want to do is trap a lot of that steam and that moisture inside the pan. So get them covered in foil, and then you want to make just a couple of little holes in the foil. You want to vent the pan. So, they should be covered but with a couple of a little air holes in there.

We're going to roast these in the oven at 400 degrees for probably, for this size, 40 minutes. Little baby beets like that – 30 minutes, big grapefruit size beets, hour and a half. So, I have a 400 degree oven, beets are going in, and we're going to come back and start checking them in about a half an hour.

Peel the Beets

So, now these beets have come out of the oven. It's been about 35 minutes and I'm going to remove the foil and take a paring knife and stick it in the beet. It should go in really easily, and fall off really easily. Just like that. And, now I want to show you how to peel. The beauty of roasting beets is that you peel after they're cooked. So, you're not struggling with a peeler and your hands turning red. Now, when you peel these beets you will get pink finger tip. Cause they do stain your fingers. So, if you want to wear gloves that'll help to prevent that. Or, you can just hold the beet in a towel, a paper towel like this. And, just take the beet in the towel. And use a little paring knife, and you can see that the skin just comes right off. It literally just slips off. You could also put the beet in the towel and just rub. And the skin just rubs right off.

So, here's one of our finished beets. I cut it into quarters and I drizzled it with some olive oil and what I did was put a little mint on there that I sliced very finely because mint and beets is a really good combination.

So, Thanks for watching. To learn more, visit us on the Web at About.com.

About videos are made available on an "as is" basis, subject to the User Agreement.